Milestones: 1866–1898

Purchase of Alaska, 1867

The purchase of Alaska in 1867 marked the end of Russian
efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America,
and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the
Asia-Pacific region. Beginning in 1725, when Russian Czar Peter the
Great dispatched Vitus Bering to explore the Alaskan coast,
Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources
and lightly inhabited. As the United States expanded westward in the early
1800s, Americans soon found themselves in competition with Russian explorers and
traders. St. Petersburg, however, lacked the financial resources to support
major settlements or a military presence along the Pacific coast of North
America and permanent Russian settlers in Alaska never numbered more than four
hundred. Defeat in the Crimean War further reduced Russian interest in this
region.

Signing of the Alaska Treaty, 1867

Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United
States would off-set the designs of Russia’s greatest rival in the Pacific,
Great Britain. The looming U.S. Civil War delayed the sale, but after the war,
Secretary of State William Seward quickly took up a renewed Russian offer and on March
30, 1867, agreed to a proposal from Russian Minister in Washington, Edouard de
Stoeckl, to purchase Alaska for $7.2 million. The Senate approved the treaty of
purchase on April 9; President Andrew Johnson signed the treaty on May 28, and
Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867. This
purchase ended Russia’s presence in North America and ensured U.S. access to the
Pacific northern rim.

For three decades after its purchase the United States paid little attention to
Alaska, which was governed under military, naval, or Treasury rule or, at times,
no visible rule at all. Seeking a way to impose U.S. mining laws, the United
States constituted a civil government in 1884. Skeptics had dubbed the purchase
of Alaska “Seward’s Folly,” but the former Secretary of State was vindicated
when a major gold deposit was discovered in the Yukon in 1896, and Alaska became
the gateway to the Klondike gold fields. The strategic importance of Alaska was
finally recognized in World War II. Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959.